Legendary African musicians line up Nairobi exhibits

Legendary Ethiopian composer, singer and pianist Girma Beryene will likely be taking part in as a visitor at a live performance by French band Akale Wube on June 22, 2022. PHOTO | POOL

A band that specialises in reviving the favored Ethiopian repertoire of the 60s and 70s and remodeling the songs into modern grooves and a musician who has adopted an historic Arabic instrument to create a singular type of digital dance fusion. This wealthy variety of worldwide sounds will likely be carried out in Nairobi at two separate concert events inside the subsequent one week.

The Tunisian-born musician Smadj (Jean Pierre Smadja) who switches between Japanese and Western music influences, digital and acoustic, trendy and classical music will carry out music from his newest album on the Alliance Francaise Saturday evening.

Subsequent Wednesday, the French group Akale Wube who’ve launched Ethio-Jazz-influenced rhythms to a complete new era will likely be in Nairobi for a live performance accompanied by legendary Ethiopian singer, composer and pianist Girma Beyene.

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Akale Wube is a bunch of 5 musicians from Paris who acquired collectively in 2008 on a ‘wild’ mission to delve into the repertoire of the golden age of Ethiopian music whose affect on jazz, soul and hip-hop is extensively acknowledged.

The target of Akale Wube was to transcribe the music from that celebrated epoch of Ethiopian vinyl data (1969-78) and rearrange them to go well with the sound of contemporary instances.

They expanded the boundaries of the music by making a bridge with West African Afrobeat and Highlife, and Jamaican ska and reggae. Their six albums have been critically acclaimed they usually have performed at packed venues all over the world.

When the army regime took over energy in Addis in 1974, many musicians had been compelled to flee into exile however a few of their data fell into the fingers of a French music fanatic, who gave the style a brand new lease of life by means of the discharge of the “Ethiopiques” sequence of albums.

Among the many musicians who fled into exile was Girma Beyene who lived among the many Ethiopian diaspora within the US for nearly three many years and solely returned to music by means of collaboration with Akale Wube in 2017.

Akale Wube will carry out along with Beyene, who was an enormous star within the Sixties ‘Swinging Addis’ scene in Ethiopia, and for the previous couple of years, toured with the band and collaborated with them on the 2017 album “Errors on Objective”.

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The Akale Wube quintet is acclaimed as one of many main exponents of Ethiopian music, and their efficiency alongside a veteran of that golden period at subsequent week’s live performance will rekindle very particular reminiscences.

In the meantime, tomorrow night French- Tunisia instrumentalist Smadj will showcase his mastery of the classical lute, often known as oud (actually “wooden” in Arabic), together with trendy digital manufacturing. The centuries-old instrument is the forebearer of contemporary stringed devices just like the guitar. It has been explored for hundreds of years in Turkish, North African and Center Japanese rhythms

Throughout his final go to to Kenya, he collaborated with artists from the Kenyan coast as his oud created excellent concord with taarab and mwanzele musicians.

Raised by Tunisian dad and mom within the suburbs of Paris, Smadj grew up on a eating regimen of Oriental sounds, Brazilian, funk, soul and folks music.

He enrolled in music college in Paris at age 15 and 5 years later graduated with a level in sound engineering. For the subsequent decade, he performed guitar and oud across the metropolis’s jazz circuit, whereas additionally creating rhythms as a session musician for a lot of classical and folks musicians.

Smadj launched his debut album “Equilibriste” in 1999 which attracted worldwide consideration for the profitable fusion of acoustic and digital sounds

The preparations which had been adventurous, advanced and complex earned the musician admirers in Europe and the U.S whereas his second album “New Deal” cemented his standing on the vanguard of a brand new era of digital Arab music producers.

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Through the course of his profession, Smadja has labored with famend artists like Malian singer Rokia Traore, Indian vocalist/guitarist Amit Chaterjee and British desk participant Talvin Singh who fuses classical Indian music with digital rhythms.

This live performance comes on the heels of the discharge of his ninth album “Twin” a collaborative album with two musicians with whom Smadj will likely be on tour in Nairobi.

He’s accompanied by Sylvain Barou, an achieved flutist and saxophonist Denis Guivarc’h from the Magic Malik Orchestra

Barou is a charming flute participant with roots in Irish music however has broadened his repertoire by adopting Japanese influences, from Indian classical music to Turkish, Kurdistan and Iranian music. His influences permit him to construct a singular model, whether or not it’s conventional, jazz or electronica and experimental.

Denis Gulvarc’h is a French saxophonist who has had a 20-year affiliation with the Magic Malik Orchestra, recording 7 albums and quite a few worldwide appearances at famend festivals just like the North Sea Jazz Competition and Montreal Jazz Competition.